


The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

by StilesSmiles



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Christmas, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StilesSmiles/pseuds/StilesSmiles
Summary: “That's not what I meant. It's like I said, you didn't like me at first and they're your family, why would they feel differently?” Derek asked anxiously. Now that Dex had figured out how nervous he was, there was really no reason to pretend like he wasn't.“Because I love you,” Dex said, taking his right hand of the steering wheel to squeeze Derek's. “And they know that. They know you make me happy and that's all they care about.”“Damn Dex, I'm emotionally unstable right now, you can't say shit like that,” Derek said almost hysterically, tearing up a bit.It's Christmas and Derek is meeting Dex's family for the first time.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trace_de_pas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trace_de_pas/gifts).



> This is my Swawesome Santa contribution for [tracedepas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tracedepas/pseuds/tracedepas). I'm sorry it's so late and I hope you like it.
> 
> Title is from the Andy Williams song.

Derek was nervous. If he was honest, he'd have to admit that he'd lost any and all semblance of chill somewhere around the Maine border but he wasn't going to tell Dex about that. Unfortunately, after over two years of playing together and a little under a year of dating Dex had him figured out pretty well.  
  
“Chill, Derek,” Dex chirped him. “It's gonna be fine. My family will love you, no need to freak out.”  
  
“Okay, a) how do you know that? You didn't like me when we first met! And b) when you met my mums you were freaking out, too,” Derek replied petulantly.  
  
“Well, I had a good reason to be nervous. When I first met your mums they still thought I was a privileged, homophobic Republican because you somehow forgot to tell them that we misjudged each other,” Dex reminded his boyfriend.  
  
“Yeah, alright, but with how much I'd been talking about you they'd had totally already figured out that I had a crush on you,” Derek said. And he was right, his mums had thought that him and Dex had been a couple long before they had actually managed to get their shit together because he talked about Dex in pretty much every single one of their weekly phone calls. A fact Derek had informed Dex about before he'd introduced him to his mums, so really, he hadn't needed to be nervous at all. Derek on the other hand felt like he had every right to a tiny nervous breakdown. “That still leaves the fact that you can't possibly know that they'll like me,” Derek insisted.  
  
“Nice to know how badly you think I know my own family,” Dex smirked, no real malice behind the statement.  
  
“That's not what I meant. It's like I said, you didn't like me at first and they're your family, why would they feel differently?” Derek asked anxiously. Now that Dex had figured out how nervous he was, there was really no reason to pretend like he wasn't.  
  
“Because I love you,” Dex said, taking his right hand of the steering wheel to squeeze Derek's. “And they know that. They know you make me happy and that's all they care about.”  
  
“Damn Dex, I'm emotionally unstable right now, you can't say shit like that,” Derek said almost hysterically, tearing up a bit.  
  
“What do you want me to do then? If I'm not allowed to reassure you?” Dex laughed.  
  
“I don't know. Tell me how far out we are. And maybe your sisters' names again so I don't embarrass myself,” Derek requested. He turned his hand over so he could hold Dex's properly which already made him feel a little better.  
  
“Alright. We need about thirty more minutes, so how about you try that breathing exercise Jack showed us? That always helps,” Dex suggested. Back when they had been freshmen and about to play their first game the two of them and Chowder had been really nervous and Jack had caught on so he had shown them a breathing exercise that he had learned from his therapist to calm them down. It had actually worked pretty well and both Dex and Derek still used it sometimes. “As for my sisters' names, the oldest one is AnnaBeth but we call her AB. She's bringing her husband Scott and their daughter Jade. Next is Wanda, she's coming with her husband Phillip and their kids Izzy and Toni. The last of my older sisters is Nikki and she's bringing her girlfriend Eleanor. And my younger sisters are Debbie, Maya and Lucy. In that order.”  
  
“Hold up, are you saying one of your sisters is gay, too?! Why am I only hearing about this now?” Derek had admittedly still been a bit afraid that Dex's family was at least a little homophobic. Dex had assured him that they weren't and that they'd known he was gay since high school but he'd also admitted that Derek was the first guy he was ever taking home with him and there was a difference between technically knowing that your son is gay and actually seeing him with his boyfriend. So yeah, he'd been somewhat weary but if Dex's older sister was also gay and bringing her girlfriend it couldn't be so bad.  
  
“She's bi actually and not gay, but yeah. Her and El have been together for five years, they share an apartment and everything but I mean it just never really came up, I didn't know this was vital information for you,” Dex said, wrinkling his forehead like he always did when he was confused.  
  
“No, no, it's not, I just thought you might've mentioned it, is all,” Derek mumbled.  
  
“Well, you know now. And also, we're here,” Dex said as he was pulling into a driveway in front of a nice, old house. It looked really homey and Derek could immediately imagine little Dex growing up here, running around the backyard that he could see behind the house with his sisters. It must've been fun growing up with so many siblings, Dex had probably never been bored in this house. Derek was a little envious of that sometimes, he loved his mums a lot but he thinks having a brother or sister would've been nice.  
  
“Come on,” Dex said, pulling Derek out of his thoughts, “Debbie and Maya are probably already spying out the window, pretending that's not what they're doing 'cause they're too cool for that.”  
  
Derek breathed in deeply one last time before he got out of the car, grabbed his bag from the trunk and followed Dex inside. Or at least he tried to because as soon as Dex set foot inside the house he was swarmed by a pack of small children wanting to hug him. Well, a pack might be exaggerated, there were only three children, although Derek could also see who he was assuming to be Debbie and Maya standing a little to the side, looking like they wanted to take part in the ongoing cuddlefest but felt too cool to do so; just like Dex had said.  
  
“Why don't you let Liam and his boyfriend come in so we can close the door and then you can say hi to them?” suggested an older woman gently, who had just appeared in the doorway to what was probably the living room. Derek was so nervous about meeting Dex's mum for the first time that he almost missed her calling Dex Liam. He'd have to ask him about that later. Right now he had to focus on Dex's mum who was making her way past the children still clinging to Dex to come over to him. “Hello love, I'm Saorise, it's very nice to finally meet you, Liam has told us so much about you,” she said with a smile.  
  
Derek was a bit weary for a moment, wondering what Dex had said about him, if he'd told them about all the things that had annoyed him about Derek in the beginning but Saorise was smiling so brightly at him that he could already feel his nervousness subside a little. “Thank you, it's very nice to meet you, too. I'm excited to spend Christmas with such a big family, usually it's just me and my mums.”  
  
“Oh, will they be all alone for Christmas now? Liam should've said, you could've invited them as well,” Saorise said, looking somewhat upset about the prospect of having taken their only son from his mums.  
  
“You don't have to be worried about them, they're taking the chance to go on a cruise together and they absolutely love it,” Derek reassured her.  
  
Before Saorise could answer a new voice shouted at them from deeper inside the house, “For how long are you planning on staying out there? The rest of us would like to meet _Nursey_ , too!”  
  
“Keep your hair on, Niks, we're coming,” Dex shouted back.  
  
“You told them about my hockey name?” Derek whispered as they made their way into the living room.  
  
“I told Nikki. She's a hockey fan so she knows about hockey names and she pestered me until I told her all of ours,” Dex told him before turning to his family who were all sitting around the living room, half of them on the floor as there wasn't enough room on the furniture. “Alright, so this is Derek, be nice to him.”  
  
The only other redhead in the room beside Dex got up from her spot on one of the couches and walked over to Derek. “Hi, I'm Wanda, I'm the second oldest in the family and the little one here is Toni,” she said, pointing to the sleeping baby in her arms, “welcome to the family.”  
  
Derek was left speechless after that. He hadn't expected to be welcomed quite so warmly, hadn't expected to be regarded as part of the family already. It was a little overwhelming. He didn't get much time to dwell on that, though, because Wanda introducing herself to him was followed by the rest of the family getting up and doing the same.  
  
“Liam, why don't you show Derek up to your room so you can put your bags away and then we can all sit down for dinner,” Dex's dad, William senior, instructed them after everybody had had their turn greeting Derek.  
  
“Sure, come on, Nurse,” Dex said, pulling Derek up the stairs behind him. They ended up in a small hallway with several doors to the left and right. Dex led him down to the last door on the right side. A picture of a Christmas wreath was hanging on his door and someone had written 'Liam' on it. “Did you make that as a kid?” Derek asked his boyfriend, pointing at the picture.  
  
“Haha, no,” Dex laughed, “that was probably Lucy.”  
  
“It's cute. But on another note, what's up with your whole family calling you Liam?” Derek asked the question that had been on his mind since they arrived.  
  
“Well, as you know I was named after my dad and everybody calls him Will so now I'm Liam since it'd obviously be confusing if we were both Will. And they can't very well call me Dex, I'm not the only Poindexter here,” Dex explained.  
  
“Makes sense,” Derek agreed.  
  
“Ready to go back downstairs?” Dex asked.  
  
“Yeah, you're family is really great,” Derek said and he meant it. He might've only been there for a half hour but it was obvious that everybody in this house loved each other very much and that they were very happy and willing to spread that love to whoever needed or wanted it. And Derek definitely wanted it.  
  
“Thanks,” Dex said, blushing a little.  
  
When they got back downstairs, Dex led him to the dining room where everybody had already sat down. There were two chairs left and Derek ended up sitting between Dex and his oldest sister AnnaBeth. As soon as they sat down everybody started reaching for the food immediately and it was a bit like watching animals fighting over their prey in the wild. “You gotta get in there, if you want food or there's not gonna be anything left,” Dex told him, nudging him forwards a little.  
  
After everybody had got a full plate, things settled down a bit and conversation started up again. It was hard to keep up with all the different topics flying around the table so Derek was content to just eat and listen. That was until he heard Dex's three older sisters start a conversation about Dex's embarrassing childhood stories. That was something he needed to hear. “Tell me everything,” Derek grinned and leaned forward. Dex groaned next to him but he chose to ignore it.  
  
“When he was like four he used to have a crush on this boy, Jordan, whose mum was friends with our mum and who was a year older than me,” Nikki started, smirking at Dex, “and one day our mums were hanging out here and so of course Jordan is also here and Liam decides to do something about his crush so he spent the entire afternoon chasing after Jordan and trying to kiss him. Jordan was not amused but really it was hilarious. To this day he still crosses the street whenever he sees Liam.”  
  
“Is he homophobic?” Derek asked concerned.  
  
“Not at all, he's just still somewhat afraid of Liam. He was a very determined four-year-old,” Nikki laughed.  
  
“Oh good,” Derek sighed in relief, “in that case it's definitely a hilarious story and exactly what I want to hear. Tell me more.”  
  
“When Liam was around five he had a phase where he absolutely hated getting dressed, he just did not want to wear clothes. It drove mum crazy, we always had to wake him up early before kindergarten because of how long it took to convince him to put on clothes and the minute he got back home he took all his clothes off again. Luckily, it was summer so it wasn't so bad that he spent about two months running around naked most of the time,” AB took over from her sister.  
  
“I wouldn't be opposed to you getting into that phase again, although maybe just when we're alone,” Derek whispered in Dex's ear who turned bright red again. Which really, was all Derek had been trying to accomplish.  
  
The evening continued on in a similar fashion, Dex's sisters telling more and more childhood stories about him, though eventually Dex chimed in and started telling stories about them. When it was clear that the little ones were not going to be able to stay awake any longer, their parents took them to bed and Dex also pulled Derek up to his room again.  
  
“I can't imagine it was ever quiet in this house when you were all still living here,” Derek said as he dropped down on Dex's bed. It wasn't that late yet but he suddenly felt very exhausted. The long drive, the nervousness and the big meeting had really taken it out off him.  
  
“It's never quiet here now with only three of us still living here. Although, we're all so far apart that we never actually did all live here at the same time, five kids was the most, by the time Maya was born AB had already moved out,” Dex said. Derek wondered, if it had ever been weird for AnnaBeth, being old enough to be some of her younger sister's mother.  
  
“Either way, I'm definitely glad you invited me, I like being here with your family,” Derek said softly. He actually felt at home already with Dex's family. They were all so welcoming and he now understood why Dex had assured him that there had been no reason to be nervous.  
  
“I like you being here with my family, too,” Dex told him quietly.  
  
Derek turned over on the bed to grin at Dex who was by now lying next to him. “Let's go to bed, I'm really tired and we're getting sappy,” he said.  
  
“Shut up, it's Christmas,” Dex retorted.  
  
“Yeah. Merry Christmas, Liam.”  
  
“Merry Christmas, Derek.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, you can find me on [tumblr](http://lovingeachdayasifitsthelast.tumblr.com) if you want :-)
> 
> Also, these are the ages of Dex's sisters, if anybody's interested:  
> AnnaBeth – 33  
> Wanda – 28  
> Nikki – 24  
> Liam – 20  
> Debbie – 17  
> Maya – 13  
> Lucy – 10


End file.
